June 16, 2013

About 40% of Mr. Puzder’s employees are part-time and therefore exempt from ObamaCare’s coverage mandates. “That percentage of employees will probably go up. Everybody is hiring more part-time employees,” he says, though he is quick to add that “we’re not firing anyone to hire” part-time workers. “Through attrition, three full-time employees go away and you hire four part-time employees who basically have the same hours.”

Mr. Puzder also expects fast-food restaurants to deal with ObamaCare by replacing workers with kiosks. “You’re going to go into a fast-food restaurant and order on an iPad or tablet instead of talking to a person because we don’t have to pay benefits for any of those things.”

Just like the Internet, the free market sees the Affordable Care Act as damage and routes around it. There is a way to stop this slow bleeding by putting more mandates and regulations onto businesses (forbidding the sort of behavior described above, fixing wages and hours as in Europe, etc) but then we won’t have a free market any longer. Some would argue that we don’t now.

It’s easy to blame greedy businesses for doing what they need to in order to survive, but speaking as a self employed person, virtually ever business decision I make has a cost/benefit analysis to it, and I cannot long afford to work for free or for less than I need to in order to pay bills.

In the food industry-with a net profit margin in the single digits -even a small increase in costs (the price of labor via mandated wage increases, raw material supplies caused by drought, increasing liabilities from more government regulations) can put a business out of business. In a climate like this it would be irresponsible for a business owner to not take every legal advantage to cut costs. That’s not evil businesses, it’s just survival.

What we’re seeing is the unintended consequences of monkeying around with 1/6th of the U.S. economy. We’re going to see a lot more.